Open discussion: "Man’s Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl
About the event
Let’s travel in space-time to Austra in 1946 to meet Viktor Frankl and read his book: Man’s Search for Meaning. The book that was born from his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps and later developed through his work as a psychiatrist and the founder of Logotherapy (existential psychotherapy). At the heart of his thinking is a simple but radical idea: human beings are not driven only by pleasure, power, or material needs, we also have a deep “Will to meaning”.
For Frankl, a meaningful life is found through what we create and contribute, through love and encounter with others, and through the way we respond to realities that we cannot change. Furthermore, he inspires us to think of what enables a person to continue living when so much of what gives life security, identity, and hope has been taken away?
Frankl wrote in another time in the past, but his question feels remarkably close to our own. We live in societies of extraordinary choice, consumption, information, mobility, and technological connection, and yet many of us struggle with loneliness, anxiety, fragmented identities, and a weakened sense of belonging. We are constantly invited to consume, perform, compete, improve ourselves, and construct an identity.
However, beneath all this activity lies a more uncomfortable questions: What are we actually living for? Are we becoming freer, or have we simply become better at distracting ourselves from the question of meaning? What happens when consumption promises fulfillment, when identity becomes a continuous project, and when community and shared narratives become weaker? And can meaning really be found entirely within the individual, or do we discover ourselves through relationships, community, service, moral responsibility, spirituality, faith, nature, creativity, and commitment to something greater than ourselves? And if our desires are continuously shaped by markets, algorithms, social expectations, and the pressure to succeed, how do we know which desires are truly ours?
This event is an invitation to use this book, Man’s Search for Meaning as a doorway into these larger questions. We will not search for one answer or assume that everyone finds meaning in the same place. Instead, we hope to bring together people from different backgrounds and beliefs to explore what it might mean to find our way back to ourselves and back to one another. It’s not about finding answers; it’s about asking better questions… I’m looking forward to meeting you all:)
